Sermon 28c: “They Endured”
“I believe that man will not
merely endure,” said William Faulkner, perhaps the greatest writer the
south has ever produced: “He will prevail. He is
immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but
because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” Today’s Gospel presupposes such beliefs. As God’s true prophet, Jesus gives
some hints of the events or signs that will accompany the coming of God’s kingdom in its fullness and warns about coming
persecutions, calamities, and divisions.
After scaring our pants off, Jesus offers some “comfortable words”: “by your endurance, you will gain your souls.”
Endurance is the act of bearing or suffering; a keeping on
under pain or distress without being overcome.
Endurance is keeping on keeping on.
I was once asked by a friend if I belonged to the k.o.k.o. club. I thought she was referring to chocoholics
anonymous, but, “no” she explained, “the k.o.k.o. club is made up of
those who keep on keeping on”. Keeping on keeping on, that’s endurance.
For reasons you might already know, I have spent time at the
physical therapy room at Meadowview Hospital this week. That place is a chamber of horrors. Despite their pain, despite their many tears,
those who do the hard work there, keep on keeping on. They endure much for health and
wholeness. For these Jesus says by your endurance, you will gain your
souls.
Pain is not only physical.
Think of our friends or family, those who have suffered deep depression. Maybe you yourself have. Those who hold on even though their grip
seems faulty, those who hold on even though their rope seems weak, they keep on
keeping on. For these Jesus says by
your endurance, you will gain your souls.
Some of the early Christians, the monks, tell us that life
is about falling down and getting up again.
Falling down and getting up again.
Falling down and getting up again and again and again. For those who know about falling down and
getting up again, Jesus says by your endurance, you will gain your souls.
Jesus’ word for endurance is
sometimes translated patience or perseverance.
But Jesus doesn’t mean the dispassion of the
lily livered, the apathetic, the indifferent, the draggy, the drippy, the passive,
the uninterested, the unfeeling, in short the wimpy. He means active resistance in the face of
opposition. He means forbearance with
backbone, fortitude with grit and guts, persistence with pluck, holding on with
vitality. Remember how we used to
describe this sort of person as having starch?
I think endurance is not so popular in the 21st century. We want fast food, fast cars and fast
computers and we are sometimes disappointed that all the predictions of the
Jetsons have not come true. We have
short attention spans; and we communicate in sound bites, emails and instant
messages. We want to buy now and pay
later. We crave instant gratification. The opposite of all this is endurance. For Jesus endurance comes from confidence and
hope in God. Hope and endurance are two
sides of the same coin. They go together like a horse and carriage. Hope without endurance is anxiety and ends in
madness. On the other hand, endurance
without hope leads to resignation, fatalism, indifference, and wimpiness.
On the feast of all saints we prayed this prayer: For in
the multitude of your saints you have surrounded us with a great cloud of
witnesses, that we might rejoice in their fellowship, and run with endurance
the race that is set before us; and, together with them receive the crown of
glory that never fades away. We
could describe saints as those who have endured. For these too Jesus says by your endurance, you will gain your souls.
How do we fit into that great crowd of witnesses who often
gave their lives and endured the cross of Christ? How do we witness? Consider the enormity of the world’s problems: all the injustice, greed and violence, the
suffering and the pain that follows these.
How can we witness to the gospel, the good news, in our torn and
massively afflicted world? Not by resignation,
fatalism, or wimpiness! We witness by
endurance; we actively resist evil. We make
these solemn oaths whenever we attend a baptism:
To
proclaim by word and example the good News
To
seek and serve Christ in all persons
To
strive for justice and peace among all peoples
These are not the promises of the apathetic, the indifferent,
the draggy, the drippy, the wimpy. We
proclaim, we seek, we strive, we keep on keeping on in the face of
disappointment and schism because resistance is never futile. We keep on keeping on in the face of blows,
blunders and bummers, because resistance is never futile. We keep on keeping on in the face of
mistakes, miscalculations and misfortunes, because resistance is never
futile. We, this little band of brothers and sisters, we too, are those to
whom Jesus says by your endurance you
will gain your souls.
William Faulkner ended his famed novel, The Sound and the
Fury, with one short sentence: “they endured”. It was a sentence
of deepest and sincerest praise. May
this be the last sentence about each one of us.
May it be our epitaph. Amen.